My wife and I moved onto a 2 acre plot in March 2020 (just in time for the lockdown!) and quickly began digging a garden with six sections. The beds were double dug with a scant amount of manure mixed in, and we planted (a bit late): eight kinds of tomatoes, corn, two kinds of watermelon, two kinds of cantaloupe, pumpkins, spinach, lettuce, beets, radishes, mammoth sunflowers, onions, sweet potatoes, basil, strawberries, and a single grape vine (pretty sure there was more, but I can't remember). There was a lot more we wanted to plant, but for our first year I'll take it.
For what we planted, some things did really well in the double-dug beds and some things did not. The tomatoes were explosive, and we continue to get more every day. Onions were crowded out by the tomato plants (we needed to prune more heavily), and basil did great until a long stretch of rain and high humidity caused some kind of fungus. The corn was either eaten by raccoons, or knocked over in storms, and the sunflowers were completely knocked over by storms. Before they were, they reached about 12 feet tall (really cool!), and we still managed to save four flowers to dry for seeds. Essentially, everything tall without supports would uproot in our loose garden beds during storms. Next year we'll plant them differently (tips welcome!)
We also picked up 10 Plymouth Rock hens (later 3 more hens and 2 roosters) and have been restoring a
chicken coop that was sinking into the ground. We bought seven bottle jacks and lifted the coop off the ground, cut away the rotten lower parts, replaced half the floor (half was surprisingly still functional), re-framed the walls, patched the roof....you get the gist; it has been quite the fun
project. Today we'll be mounting new frames with hardware cloth over the windows and white washing the inside. Time for the
chickens to get out of our house!
Future plans are to build a
greenhouse, plant a small orchard, set up some bee hives, finish out the basement (at least remove the asbestos and seal the walls against rain
water), and so much more. I look forward to reading more on here, learning about improving soil quality, and hopefully getting a handle on the various types of diseases that seem to plague this humid environment.
Brian
PS - there are 2 chestnut
trees, 10+ black walnut trees, and a pear tree here as well!
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